what is there to do here?

the boys who’d asked
what is there to do here
huddle in close
pick snails off leaves
disappear with cups
to pick “blueberries” off Brambles
return with chins and fingers
stained wine red

as we walk
comfrey leaves are stuck
to arms, chests
badges peeled and reapplied

birds become more than ducks and swans
trees acquire names like Ash and Hazel
unripe apples are picked and bitten
then kicked about
pale-green pebble-hard footballs

we progress like a higgledy-piggledy train
adults orbited by
running boys and quiet, feisty Maddie
a passerby smiles
“This is a very large family!”

I stop for a moment to hold it all
a floating lotus and lily-pad island
geese climbing the banks to join us
a glimpse of red and black and white
on a chaffinch

and beyond
the sound of a gong
a Buddhist temple bell
no one else hears

7th April ~ a stone / poem

stuffing snow foam down Jake’s top
I catch the scent of a free sample
I’d sprayed earlier, on my wrist
It conjures up a row of steel grey
matriarchs, sitting in pews
in florid horrors and paper skin
made superior by Elizabeth Arden

it makes me feel how far I am from that
rolling around on the floor
letting my toddler get a fistful of bra
for snow foam revenge
but every time I sniff
there they are again

faint now
but still hanging around